When it comes to Rome even the most creative and immaginative minds risk to fall in an indefinite number of cliché.
How can you describe in a new way something that ancient and majestic like the Colosseum? What words can describe the view from Gianicolo or the web of alleys in Trastevere? It is a long list of cliche: the food, the weather, the blue skies that are of a shade of blue you can only find here. People on the streets, art that is in every single corner and building. Living here sometimes feels like a big deal. Going to have breakfast and casually passing by the most important works of art of our Italian heritage, it is a big deal indeed.
Over the years it became normal, invisible like things we give for granted. It became so obvious that it is like been awaken when someone tell you how amazing it is to live in a city where the sun shines almost constantly, where we have one of the best cuisine in the world and art and culture spread from every brick. It’s like been awaken because the reality it’s not always amazing, because even beautiful things are complicated.
There are days I can’t stand Rome for being so crowded, overly hectic and disorganized, days I hate the public transport (who doesn’t ?) and things being late. Because the city can be a void of solitude if it doesn’t become home. Rome can be raw like its ancient walls. This city can be cruelly real, challenging. Some weeks ago near Altare della Patria an Indian girl asks me and Lit for a pic and when she heard we live here she was amazed and replied ”how lucky!”. Are we ? In the tough days I’m not sure anymore, I would like to run anywhere away, and I ask myself if it was the right decision to move here.
The truth is that some of these days, more than anything, I feel sorry for this beautiful city, that looks like a troublesome, forgotten woman. Where everyone want to take advantage and nobody care.
I feel sorry because I know things are not how they used to be and that this city could be the most beautiful one if it was treated with more care and thoughtfulness.

When tourists tell us we are lucky we feel like they’re talking about a jewel we are all leaving to the waste of time.
Rome has always been a lady of time, you feel the soul of centuries in its streets. When I am angry an saturated happens that I turn my eyes to a corner that blind me with so much beauty and just like that I feel connected with the city again. In the lights of a sunset reflecting on the river it is like looking to Rome in the eyes and we both understand each other again, we accept each other like this.

“With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” – Italo Calvino